E3 Impressions: Need For Speed

Need for Speed really set out this year with a fresh new title and the idea to reinvent itself and from what we were told, to start listening more on what players wanted in their Need for Speed game. Cherry picking the best and most well received pieces of each game into a much better and complete version.

The new Need for Speed takes place in a city called Ventura Bay an area twice the size of the world in Need for Speed Rivals, and you are a part of a nighttime street racing group. Your job like always is to gain the reputation to be the top dog, with the top car.

From what we got to play, the game looked great and after a little bit of getting used to the controls, played just as great. If the folks working on Need for Speed at Ghost Games really nailed one thing this time, it is for sure customization. Before we started playing, we got 3 minutes to check out what we could customize on our cars that were in the game and there has got to be about 20-25 places to chance pieces of your car. From full body kits to changing out what each wheel looks like on a per axle basis. Not to mention the ability to customize your cars tuning, allowed for a novice Need for Speed player to pick a more general control/drift slider but a advanced player to fine tune many more details in how your car will handle to maximize their performance in driving how they want to.

Speaking of driving how you want to, that’s a strong focus for this entry in the Need For Speed franchise. With the “Five Ways To Play” you can gain points by playing any way you really want, but you will get more points the bigger combo you can gain. By doing two will give you 2x the points, 3 3x of course… and so on and of course the coveted “Perfect Moment” where you get 5x the points and use all 5 ways to play.

Overall, even not as a guy who is big into racing games or even many previous too many Need for Speed games, I enjoyed the gameplay that I got to do in Need for Speed. We had a nice battle for the top spot on the leaderboard in a 8 or so player race for the top points, and for those moments your in the lead those are the ones that were definitely the best knowing you were the top racer in the room. I expect this next Need for Speed to be a popular one with racing game fans or just Need for Speed fans as everything I had a chance to play was pretty solid. Need for Speed will be releasing on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One on November 3rd, 2015. If you want to find more information about Need for Speed check out their official site HERE. Like always as well, make sure to ask me any questions about Need for Speed that I might be able to answer!